cluberti

Moved.

You can't dismiss a UAC dialog from a script (for one, it's not shown in the same session as the script that's running). You could disable UAC (and reboot) from a script, and then re-enable it afterwards (that might work). See this.

Are you talking about the UAC prompt dialog? If so, the answer is no (imagine the security hole if you could dismiss the box from script..... ).

If you're talking about simply imaging the install from one drive and dropping that image on a new drive in the same PC, that can be done without anything special. This will work even if you're moving the image to a new PC entirely, as long as everything inside is exactly the same (depending on the version of XP, you may have to re-activate, but it will work once activated). If you're cloning a machine and plan on putting that image on more than one machine, though, you need to consider using sysprep to "prep" the machine (and remove most machine-specific info, including the SID) before capturing the image - that way each iteration of the image put down on a new PC is different (after mini-setup runs). Note you need a volume license of Windows to do this legally, of course.

Look, whether you like it or not, redistributing Microsoft software (even if it's just media, no keys) is illegal in most developed countries under copyright law (software is treated more like a book than a packaged product - redisting the software is like redisting the code, sort of like plagiarizing a book, and that runs you afoul of copyright laws; it's not quite that simple, but it's close). We have rules here that say not to discuss ways of circumventing copyright or violating a company's choice on who can or cannot redistribute their software in rule 1.a. Please, if you would, abide by the rule even if you don't personally like or agree with it.

Are you doing flat-file installs, or deploying riprep images? Also, is this a 2000 or 2003 server running RIS?

The runas command should be able to do this, although if the user is not an administrator they'll likely see a consent prompt unless you change the default behavior in policy.

That all depends on the reason it was slow, and what point during shutdown. Winlogon first calls apps to shut down, then it calls services.exe to shut down services that are running, then Winlogon goes into an actual system shutdown routine that either reboots or shuts down the box. It would be beneficial to know what part of shutdown was slow.

When in doubt, look it up on Technet.

I dunno about useless snake oil, but I do agree that the inbox defragmenter in Windows (especially Win7) is more than enough, and scriptable and runs from the command line as well. If you want a nice GUI, then these tools are probably all fine, but something that runs from a scheduled task during idle with no UI is best for me, and works best in a corp environment as well.

Wow - I expected far more CBS data given you're installing a whole OS. That's really, really odd.

Can't say I'm seeing it on two machines, but that's only two. Perhaps you can get a complete dump the next time it crashes out?

Is that an actual printer name though? Try running this as a .vbs, and see what deviceIDs you have on that box (again, assuming that port and printer is already added): strComputer = "." Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\CIMV2") Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery( _ "SELECT * FROM Win32_Printer",,48) For Each objItem in colItems Wscript.Echo "-----------------------------------" Wscript.Echo "Win32_Printer instance" Wscript.Echo "-----------------------------------" Wscript.Echo "DeviceID: " & objItem.DeviceID NextIt's saying the object's DeviceID is not found - this is the line that's failing: set oPrinter = oService.Get("Win32_Printer.DeviceID='" & strPrinter & "'")

Can you provide the %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log file after one of these failed upgrades?

Take a look at MDT 2010 - it would save you some on those Ghost licenses as well, as all of the tools needed are free from MS (other than the machine to run MDT on, of course).

For 1, 2, and 4, if you set the Administrator profile up before you sysprep, look into the CopyProfile section of the unattended file. For 3, you'll probably have to script these using powercfg.

That printer name looks awfully wrong - I think you're trying to set a default printer with a connection you haven't created. Look deeper into the -ac and -p options (run the script with no switches to get an idea of what you're doing wrong).

Obviously if these are XP or Vista clients, you could use SteadyState if DeepFreeze was to easy to break - just make sure these users are NOT logging in as administrators, otherwise none of these solutions will be anything but trivial to break down. If something like SteadyState doesn't work (for whatever reason), you can always go to the next step up and set up a server running WDS and MDT 2010, and have your lab's images or the flat-installation files and application installers stored there; when the users invariably break machines or infect the network (make sure the WDS/MDT machine is running good antivirus software), you can just reboot the machines, PXE boot, and re-image or rebuild using an MDT task sequence. You could add an AD environment with a domain controller running DHCP and DNS, although depending on how much control you need, that might be overkill. It'd work, that is true, but the flip-side of that is that it would just add more administrative overhead to the environment.

Here's a question - what happens if you go about running the Vista Enterprise setup manually (remove partitions, format, install, etc all manually from the DVD during the setup program)?

If it's just for your own machine, you can modify the EnableLUA reg value via the command: reg ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f However, if this is in any sort of domain environment (where UAC for non-admin users is actually preferable), you can make a local (or group) policy change so that Admins don't get prompted under Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Local Policies > Security Options > User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode - set this to "Elevate without prompting". Note that this can also be done by direct modification of the ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin reg value via the command: reg ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f In a domain environment you would want to do this from a policy rather than a registry tatoo, but it is possible to edit the registry to mimick this policy.

You might want to consider getting the latest NIC drivers for that chip from Intel rather than Dell, as those are signed.

From prnmngr.vbs: '---------------------------------------------------------------------- ' ' Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. ' ' Abstract: ' prnmngr.vbs - printer script for WMI on Windows ' used to add, delete, and list printers and connections ' also for getting and setting the default printer ' ' Usage: ' prnmngr [-adxgtl?][co] [-s server][-p printer][-m driver model][-r port] ' [-u user name][-w password] ' ' Examples: ' prnmngr -a -p "printer" -m "driver" -r "lpt1:" ' prnmngr -d -p "printer" -s server ' prnmngr -ac -p "\\server\printer" ' prnmngr -d -p "\\server\printer" ' prnmngr -x -s server ' prnmngr -l -s server ' prnmngr -g ' prnmngr -t -p "printer" ' '---------------------------------------------------------------------- You would use -t -p "printer" to set the default printer by it's common name (use -g to get the current default to see what I mean).

Good to hear! We've been suggesting MDT to people for a few years now (since it was MDT 2008), but 2010 Update 1 is really pretty polished. Good to hear you got it working.

I'm not quite sure where you're getting your numbers, but I blew out the Win7, Vista, and XP packages to see what I could find. The XP shell32 update is ~8MB in size, the Vista shell32 update is ~11MB for x86 and ~12MB for x64, and the Win7 shell32 update is ~12MB for x86 and ~13MB for x64. All of which approximately match the file size of shell32 previously installed, for what it's worth - there's no delta patching here, it's replace (well, WinSXS and link for Vista/Win7) all the way.

If you're using Vista or Win7, look in the \System32 folder for the Printing_Admin_Scripts folder. There are vbs scripts there to do printer management, so you no longer have to use rundll32 to install drivers, queues, etc.